St. George's

St. George's, Captial City

Well, I woke up early today after having a pretty late night (went to bed around 3am) and had breakfast with a couple of buds at Grove's Bistro in our student center. Food on campus runs a bit on the high end, but I think I mentioned that... Well, at 10 I went on a school sponsored tour of the capital, St. George's. It was pretty good, though a couple of the others were better. But it was beneficial because we got to see where a lot of the markets were including the Fish Market where fresh fish are brought in daily and the Vegetable Market that runs Monday through Saturday. The Fish Market is less than 500 yards from the ocean, so it's easy to believe how fresh the fish is. My interviewer told me that down here in Grenada, it'd be best to avoid the beef and pork as they aren't USDA certified and checked, chicken is okay depending on where you get it, but the fish is good stuff. Walking by the market reminded me of being in Taiwan with all the scents..

Next, after the Fish Market, we went to a mall. It actually looked like a real mall (similar to the interior of Greenville Mall), only it was definitely geared towards the tourists. All the stores were mostly souvenir shops and it ended in a waiting area for the people waiting to board a cruise ship. There were two cruise ships docked when we went by: the Norwegian Spirit and Ocean Village. We walked by the Vegetable Market. The best day for the freshest goods is Saturday. The Vegetable Market is located at the bottom of a very steep incline that we climbed to get to another road leading to a fort. I may not have mentioned, but Grenada is extremely hilly and there are a lot of steep inclines both for driving and walking. I'm constantly amazed at how people drive here as well. They use beeps for alerting other drivers that they're coming around a curve, and the roads are super narrow, but somehow they still manage to drive with cars going both ways. The taxi drivers have no fear. Oh, and the roads and cars are the British version, everything on the left, rather than the right. But anyway, back to the subject at hand.. yeah, the fort...

Apparently this fort was built around 1983 by the Americans, when there was an uprising or revolt and the Americans came to liberate the Grenadians. The natives love Ronald Regan for delivering them and think that he was the greatest guy ever. But yeah, we also saw a couple churches. If you look closely at some of the pics you'll notice that the roofs are missing. This is some of the residual aftermath of Hurricane Ivan that came through a couple of years ago. From what I heard it was pretty bad here. The last hurricane that came through was maybe 50 years ago, so the current generation was completely unprepared. Students were hiding out in the dorms with bats and mace, while some locals roamed the streets with machetes. Many of the homes have just been completely destroyed. My advisor said that some homes that were close to the ocean were completely uprooted and set back down in the middle of streets. While driving along the roads often you'll see staircases on the exterior of homes leading up to the roof. Those stairs used to lead up to the next floor, but due to the hurricane, they lost a whole floor of the house. But the Grenadians are recovering well after the hurricane.

While there are a lot of buildings that still need work, the people here run on their own time.. which is very lax. We jokingly call it "Caribbean Time" because there really isn't any sense of time here. If a schedule says that something opens at 8am, it might not be until 830am before you actually saw someone come by and unlock the doors. A few of my friends said that they went to pick up books at the warehouse right when it was supposed to open, and they ended up waiting about 20 minutes before anyone showed up. Then the guy just sat there on a stool for another 10 minutes, looked at them, stretched and then sat for another 10 minutes before greeting them. So like I said before... everything here is very relaxed. To us, Americans, sometimes it's easy to let yourself get frustrated and annoyed with the people because back home, time is money. But the people here just seem to soak up life and take time to just sit and enjoy it. They don't really get all stressed out about things.

Well, tonight's the AMSA (American Medical Students Associations) big party of the term. It's supposed to be the first and biggest party of the term. It's being held on the Grand Anse Beach, and has an "open bar." Cost is 35EC ($13USD) for nonmembers, and 25EC ($10USD) for members. Membership seems to have lots of benefits back in the states. You can get discounts for a lot of items and insurance, etc. It seems that it would be a good time to get to mingle and get to know a lot of people. However, I'm not going to go in part because I'm not going to be drinking so there really is no point in shelling out $13 just to stand and watch everyone else get wasted and because I'm really tired. So yeah, party-hearty all... Just let me know how it goes...